Martin MAC 2000s on tour with the Super Furry Animals

Popular Welsh band Super Furry Animals recently finished the UK leg of their Furrymania tour, promoting their first single ‘Juxtapozed With U’ from their new studio DVD album.

Being on DVD format, the album features a film with every music track. Therefore, when it came to the tour, a large video element to promote this aspect of the album had to be incorporated within the lighting scheme for the show. This was done to huge success by the bands lighting designer, Nick Jevons, as the accompanying photos testify.

The format of the tour was to play shows over three consecutive weekends, in Manchester, Glasgow and London. The multi venue tour began in each city on the Friday night with a screening of the DVD film at a local cinema. This was followed with the band taking over a nightclub. At each club, video projectors and screens, showing footage of the DVD and video loops, were installed for the night. On the Saturday the band played an acoustic set in one venue during the afternoon. This was then followed by a live show in the evening and to round it all off - an after-show party.

For his lighting design, Jevons specified a variety of Martin Professional equipment including 12 MAC 2000s, 12 MAC 600s and 12 Atomic strobes. 2 DF-50 haze machines and an Avolites Sapphire 2000 console completed the inventory, which was supplied entirely by Bandit Lites UK.

Jevons was also fundamental in the video direction of the show, creating and compiling much of the material used throughout the night. He explains, "The show was a mixture of video and lighting. We had 10 Sony 29" video monitors, 6 Sharp V10 LCD projectors and 6 screens. There was not a lot of movement as the video was doing that. I just wanted to create the most dynamic stunning scenes I could, for which I chose the MAC 2000. This gave me the best beam definition I could get. I also used the CMY mixing to its full as I wanted to attain rich saturated colors. The MAC 600’s complimented the 2000s beautifully."

He continues, "I put custom gobos in the 2000s as I wanted to achieve the right beam break-ups. When I wanted to add killer blow to the show I let rip with the Atomics. They were absolutely breathtaking, it was just like having a strobing molefay and I will have trouble using another strobe now. I gelled the Atomics in three colors enabling me to achieve a block color wash across the stage."

The album entitled Rings Around the World is now set to make history in the new DVD format, and immediately before its release, it was given a preview screening at cinemas across the UK.